Tom Jones - Verses

After the 45th reunion, I penned the following verse. I forget whether I had already shared it with you.

School Competition

A chance to read a poem of my own 

to all my schoolmates gathered! Would they sneer

or think me stupid, as I used to fear?

Perhaps this honour could somehow atone

for lunchtimes spent unfriended and alone.

I edged towards the microphone with hope

of putting right the doubts and shame of years

in high school, feeling lesser than my peers;

while never knowing whether I could cope

with clawing up achievement’s awesome slope.

But faces looking back would never more

be schoolboys. They were greying, wrinkled men-

reunion revellers recalling when

they’d started high school fifty years before

and since had lived the lives they’d studied for.

The pressure that we’d all once felt to thrive

as sporting stars or scholars was now gone.

We’d come tonight to reminisce, along

with seeing which of us was still alive.

The competition now? Just to survive.

Best Wishes,

Tom Jones